Watching a financial piece on the cost of living crisis isn’t exactly unusual on ITV’s breakfast show, Good Morning Britain, as it’s been a host topic for several years in the UK.
Spiralling inflation rates have put huge pressure on family finances, and as a result, the early morning news and current affairs programmes have turned to experts like Martin Lewis to help with ways to make life a little easier. The Money Saving Expert has even become a regular anchor on one of the UK’s biggest breakfast shows.
While he gives great advice on when to read your energy meters, how to know when to use your oven instead of the microwave to cook baked potatoes and countless other tips that incrementally improve the household finances, there’s one thing about presenting GMB that you wouldn’t expect to see on his own series, the Martin Lewis Money Show.
It feels a little odd when you see them segway from talking about people struggling to pay their bills into a promotion encouraging viewers to spend a couple of quid on a competition entry, with Andi Peters selling the dream of winning a six figure prize from the top of a Dubai sky scraper.
Admittedly, a couple of pounds probably isn’t the difference between boom and bust for many families, but the premium rate phone numbers are probably something that people either use repeatedly or don’t use at all. In other words, for those people buying into Andi’s dream, it’s unlikely to be a one off cost to them.
Of course, there are free ways to enter – there are even websites the highlight that not all entries cost you two pounds (or sometimes more). For example, on the web you can read how the Good Morning Britain competition can be entered by post without paying ITV a penny, so there are alternatives to the phone calls and online entries that are most prominently visible on the TV.
While the internet has a habit of calling everything a scam or a con, I don’t believe there’s anything overly suspicious or any foul play in the prize draws Mr Peter’s promotes, and I’m perfectly satisfied that the winners you see them wheel out time and time again genuinely have won prizes worth huge amounts of money.
What people who are struggling to pay the bills probably don’t see though, is the staggeringly long odds of being that next big winner, as there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of entries for each of these competitions, otherwise ITV would be losing money on each prize they give away, not to mention flying Mr Peters around the world – and I’ll bet he’s not slumming it in economy either.
Before I’m accused of being a kill joy by some eye rolling reader, I’m not saying that no-one should enter to try their luck at winning prizes, whether that’s on TV or anywhere else. Life should be fun, and if you get a smile from rolling the dice and seeing what happens every now and again, then more power to you.
My concern is more the message that comes across when a financial expert and almost-national-hero like Martin Lewis is trying to help us save a few pound on household bills, only for that small saving to be offset by the temptation to try to win a prize that comes with odds in the order of one in a million.
As the presenters usually say once a famous voice finished reading the terms and conditions for whatever prize draw happens to be running that day… “yes, good luck with that one”.